Settling In

April 20, 1962

"Time heals all wounds" and the Beatles are settling into their residency at the new Star Club in Hamburg.  They play shorter sets and with much less sporting around on stage.  They play in suits and from pre-arranged set lists.  It's all part of the new direction.  The venue was later destroyed by fire, but the entrance way is still recognizable on Google Earth.  It is right across the Grosse Freiheit from arch rival club, the Kaiserkeller where so much of the Beatles earlier development took place and where a previous visit came to a bad end.

The Star is a new club that is just opening now.  There are some terrific reminiscences from an actual club patron (who happened to be a pretty Hamburg girl at just the right time) here.  Scroll down about halfway for Maja.

Today is the Christian holy day called Good Friday.  It is the only day the Beatles have off on this trip to Hamburg.  In a related development, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, however, at Harvard Divinity School, under the supervision of Professor Timothy Leary, the Marsh Chapel Experiment is being conducted.  In this experiment, volunteers are given doses of hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms so their effect on religious experience can be examined.  Believe it or not, it is only about three years from today when George Harrison and John Lennon are unknowingly slipped doses of LSD, courtesy of a dentist/sycophant in London's Bayswater district as they are in the midst of making their second film, Help.

Things are about to start happening fast!